Get ready to catch stillwater trout in Oregon’s high lakes with this classic chironomid midge pattern, the Ice cream cone. Barrett says this staple fly for Crane Prairie is a great year round bloodworm imitation. In the spring, fish really key in on these chironomids fished under an indicator. Tie these sparse for realism.
Ice Cream Cone
Hook: Daichi 1150 size 10-16
Bead: Pearl
Thread: 8/0 Uni black
Body: Midgebodi (or red floss)
Rib: Copper wire
Collar: Synthetic peacock dubbing
Fished the Mckenzie the past two days. This Wednesday and Thursday we put in a Deerhorn and ran down to Hayden Bridge. Wednesday the water was over 13,000 cubic feet per second at the Hayden Bridge gage. It was like fishing a new river. When your flies were over willows you knew things weren’t good. Surprisingly, we did find fish. Visible drop offs and softer water with 3-5 feet of depth seemed to be most productive. Thursday the river made a steep drop and came under 10,000cfs at Hayden Bridge. There were bugs out both days, Pale Morning Duns, smaller March Browns, small dark caddis. Thursday afternoon we did see a few green Mckenzie Caddis. Very few fish were on the surface, but swinging a Mega Prince and a Possie Bugger tightline down and across was very effective. The river will drop more in the coming days and fishing should be even better.
The fish we landed, wild rainbows, wild cutthroats and hatchery rainbows were very healthy. The trout had robust stomachs, probably gorgeing on cased caddis that have rolling down the river with all the high water. Despite the high water fishing was really pretty good yesterday(Thursday). Water temperatures ranged from 45-47 degrees. Lower and warmer water is the forecast. Concentrate your efforts on the lower Mckenzie and you will have surprising success.
If you enjoyed the Bauer Fly Reel factory tour, you’ll love this clip from Field & Stream’s Fly Fishing Blog on YouTube. They guys hook up a Bauer MX4 to a motorcycle and run out the drag. They compare the reel against Abel, Ross, and Nautilus and the Bauer scores high.
From the Field & Stream Flytalk blog:
We tied them up to the ass end of a street bike, burned a little rubber, then watched — and felt — how each reel reacted. We paid close attention to startup drag performance, that initial acceleration a fish makes at the critical moment of going from zero resistance to outward line acceleration. Was it scientific? No. But we did do our homework, learning that a max trout burst is about 9 mph; bonefish race at around 23 mph; and big game fish like mako sharks can reach speeds of 50-plus mph. Was it fair? We tested each reel only at the top speed of the fish it was designed to handle.
There are several useful tools that can help an angler really see why this snow melt blowout is happening (besides all the snow of course) and understand when it will end. The Oregon State Marine Board maintains a page that shows how full the Willamette Valley reservoirs are and how much water is coming in and going out of each reservoir. The entire Willamette Reservoir system is at 96% full. Cougar is the least full at 93% of full pool. I’ve been using this page in combination with a snowpack data page maintained by the NOAA. It is pretty cool–you can animate snowpack depth, snowmelt, etc. over the season, last two weeks or just the past day. The bottom line is that there is still lots of snow in the Cascades that will continue to melt if t stays warm and in combination with the spill levels necessary due to the full reservoirs make fishing conditions in these systems difficult. Of course, if you just want to check the river levels there are a couple of really useful sites. The NOAA breaks the state up into a few zones that don’t precisely match the statewide angling zones but pretty close. The NOAA page I use most contains the Northwest Zone, Willamette Zone and a Couple of Central Zone streams. The benefit of this page is that it also shows projected levels, the drawback is that there are fewer gauges. The USGS Oregon River levels page has just about every gauge in the state and is a great source of data. The only drawback is that it does not forecast levels. These tools are all useful and can help you determine where you have the best chance of getting into good fishing. What they are telling us now is what we already knew: the high levels on the Willamette tribs are here to stay for a while.
The blog crew will continue to try to think outside the box and point you towards some good fishing.
Had enough of high river levels? You might consider a few of the ice free Cascade lakes. Recent reports have indicated lake fishing has been “steady”. Here is the latest information from Bend Fort Rock Ranger District:
Lava Lake: open Thursday but snow in some areas. Snow gate will be moved from Deschutes Bridge to above Lava Lake.
Little Lava Lake: Open Thursday, snow free
East Lake: 60% of the facilities will open Friday, currently iced over.
Pauline lake: 80% of the facilities will open Friday, ice free.
The road crews are working very hard to plow the Cascades Lakes Highway. There is still 9-10 feet of snow Cascades Lakes Hwy., no news as to when it will be open
Crane Prairie, Big Cultus, North & South Twin, Little Lava and Wickiup Reservoir, may cure some angler frustration with high river levels. Flys to consider before you go are: Baby or mini buggers (olive, black, brown), thin mints, leech patterns, and chironomids. Please be aware that high snow levels still abound for several other lakes which may deny access or at least, difficult conditions.
Both the Mckenzie and Willamette Rivers have been off the charts high. The object this week was to find a river to float and fish within reasonable proximity to the Eugene area. Current levels allow The Coast Fork of the Willamette to fit the bill.
This Monday we floated from the BMX track boat landing on Row River Road to Dilley Lane boat landing off of Highway 58. The drift was a bit to long, around 14 miles. Having never floated it I had no idea how far the river left the roads I had gaged the drifts distance with. The fishing was decent, some very nice cutthroats and a few nice rainbows. The river looks great and has inumerable fishey looking spots. This time of year the water is cool and the fish fought hard. About two miles up stream from the Sears Road bridge there is a nasty rapid that is a very tight fit for a drift boat, no problem with a pontoon craft. Tuesday we tried to make the drift a bit shorter. Starting at the Sears Road Bridge and ending at Island Park on the main Willamette. The fishing was not quite as good on this stretch, although we did catch rainbows both wild and stocked as well as cuts. The river slows down and has quite a few large flat sections one needs to row through. Overall both sections of the Coast Fork offer very nice scenery, quality wild cutthroat and rainbows, and zero angling pressure. Maybe on the weekends it is different but we did not see another fisher for two days. The flows for this river have been dropping fast, Monday it was around 1600 and by Tuesdays end of day it was down to around 1000. As the river gets even lower, the faster, broken water sections will be the majority of the trout holding water.
As of this morning, the Deschutes River was at 5690cfs and moving up. Reports from this past weekend indicate fishing was fair to good in the Warm Springs-Trout Creek area. The large stone fly nymphs are moving and anglers who are nymphing are being rewarded. Kaufman’s stones, prince nymphs, emerging caddis patterns, and beaded phesant tails are patterns anglers should carry. It is still a bit early for the adults (dry’s) in the Warm Springs area, but anglers should keep a keen eye near the banks.
Last weekend the high water and even higher gas prices drove the blog crew to think outside of the box. Record snowpack and soaring temperatures blew up the Willamette and McKenzie Rivers. The Central Oregon lakes were supposedly fishing well, but it’s a hell of a drive, so we opted to try something closer to home.
We decided to head out to Esmond Lake which is a small three acre cutthroat lake, a rarity in the heart of the Oregon Coast Range. It was formed by a landslide on Esmond Creek, a tributary on the Upper Siuslaw. It’s not stocked, hard to find via a maze of logging roads, and physically challenging to hike into. It was our first time making the trip.
When we pulled up to the unmarked trailhead to the lake, we put on our waders and threw our float tubes on our backs. We were about a half-mile down the trail when I stumbled onto the first bear pie. It was big, brown and mostly grassy.
In the second half-mile of the hike, we counted over 15 piles of bear shit and each pile seemed to get wetter and fresher as we followed the bears down the trail. I’m assuming it was a mother and cubs, because we found some big turds, but also some little paw prints. Not a good sign. I was on point, so I stuck my giant float tube out in front of me like a sheild and pushed on, trying to keep the chatter up on the trail.
We eventually got to the lake, where giant logs were spilled over the creek outlet, and it was nearly impossible to get open access to the water without balance beam walking and log rolling over several hundred yards of downed old growth stacked and floating between the end of the trail and open water. This was even more fun when you’re wearing waders and carrying a digital camera.
The impounded stream drowned the forest and the remnant trunks of that forest still stand ghostly above the water level. The lake itself was deep, cold and fishy looking. And we made the assumption that uneducated trout would go for a weighted wooly bugger stripped slowly. We didn’t count on picky fish. But picky they were. We got a few tugs on our buggers, a rise on a small caddis. Todd of TU Chapter 678 caught a couple fish on a March Brown wet fly, fished in the film, but the biggest topped out at nine inches.
Despite the slow fishing, we stuck it out till near dark, then pushed our way back through the overgrown trail , float tubes first, avoiding the bear turds.
Barrett and Leigh Christiensen were married this afternoon at The Caddis Fly Angling Shop. We always new the shop was considered a “full service fly shop”. It was an honor to add marriage to the many firsts the shops 30 year history has enjoyed. Congratulations Barrett and Leigh!
Both the Mckenzie and Willamette Rivers continue to rise to ridiculous levels. Unseasonably hot weather combined with record snow pack and already full reservoirs have meant unfishable rivers. If you were planning on fishing the Mckenzie or Willamette early this week it is time to make other plans.
There are numerous great options to explore. Here are some waters that are well worth checking out in the coming days:
Davis Lake; Bass fishing has been fair and should get much better with all the heat and warming water temperatures. Launch your tube or boat at the Lava Flow Campground, fish large heavy streamers on the bottom.
Craine Prairie Reservoir; Fishing has been great at Craine lately. Chironomids fished in Quinn and Deschutes channels have been yeilding excellent results. Use a strike indicator and suspend both a small wooly bugger and a chironomid about 5-7 feet below.
Deschutes River; Fishing has been excellent with larger stonefly nymphs fished both near shore and near depth transitions. Adult Salmon flies have been spotted around Maupin and the past few days heat have undoubtably moved the hatch up in terms of peak time.
Wickiup Reservoir; Kokanee fishing has been excellent. Pink and white flies fished “Jig” style have been pounding on them.
We will keep our ears open to other hot fisheries and try to get an idea of what access will be like this weekend at the opening of Gold Lake. Stay Tuned
I fished yesterday despite some very high water. Since I took the boat out last night things have jumped another 2000cfs making the Middle Fork of the Willamette flat out scary near 7000 cubic feet per second. The Mckenzie is absolutely roaring, currently over 9000cfs. The optimists view is that we are going to get this snow melt over with in a hurry. If you do go on either one of these rivers today, which I don’t recommend, be very careful. There will be logs and debris flying down the river, possibly creating new hazards, as I saw yesterday.
We did manage some decent fish on nymphs in the “slower” water, what little there was.
Add a little wind, a couple of two fly rigs, a thousand casts and eventually you will get one of these.
More to come on this report but we have word that fishing was great yesterday at Craine. The early game for Craine Prairie is chironomids dropped of an indicator around 5-7 feet. Fish in and around the river channels early in the season the fish seem to concentrate in those areas.
Good numbers of Green Mckenzie Caddis were out today on the lower Mckenzie. I floated from Belinger to Armitage and fishing was good. Yellow Soft Hackles, Possie Buggers and Royal Coachman Wets were the ticket early. Around 3:30 the wind laid down again and we found fish in classic big green water. Heavy current edges and riffle drop offs. Fish ate the CDC Green Mckenzie Caddis nicely. My thermometer showed a reading of 52.1 today which is optimal. It looks like the river levels is spiking up, how high will they go and how quick will they drop??
